The Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday published a front-page feature story about Bob Skiba, who helped to form our partnership with the Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides. Bob is currently president of the Tour Guides and heads the archives at the William Way Community Center in Philadelphia. Read all about it. Congratulations also to the Tour Guides on completion of their recent certification training and examination -- as a result, twenty-nine newly certified guides are prepared for the tourist season of 2011.

We're pleased to call attention to a new documentary produced by area high school and college students under the direction of one of the Encyclopedia project's advisers, Professor Amy Hillier at the University of Pennsylvania. Legacy of Courage: W.E.B. DuBois and The Philadelphia Negro, was created as part of the Mapping DuBois Project.

What might you do if you found yourself with almost 50,000 square miles of seemingly virgin land in a place you have never seen, far from home? In 1681, when William Penn - entrepreneur, scholar, religious mystic, Enlightenment intellectual - acquired Pennsylvania, he had a ready answer.

Primed with forward-looking ideas about equality and shared community resources from Thomas More's Utopia, and inspired by the Quaker vision of George Fox and Thomas Loe, Penn was convinced that he could construct a "Holy Experiment" with a well-planned settlement and a rational government. He aimed for a social contract that would bind and respect all residents, based not on coercion but on the principle of "what love can do."

Sure, it's an encyclopedia, but don't confuse this with an outdated dinosaur like Britannica, the relic from the '80s that took up an entire wall in your grandfather's living room. This project includes an online volume, making it relevant and accessible in today's digital world and giving readers a voice in the content.

Johnson takes note of the energetic participation in the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable discussions, which are helping to shape the Encyclopedia's contents. Next up is a discussion of Philadelphia as a "Holy Experiment," on Thursday, April 14, at Friends Center, 1501 Cherry Street. To sign up, visit our Events page -- and watch for the essay "Holy Experiment" on Sunday, April 10, in the Currents section of the Philadelphia Inquirer, on this web site, and on Newsworks.org.